[PLUG] Redhat changes, fedora

[Jeme A Brelin]

On Tue, 4 Nov 2003, Josh Orchard wrote:
> With todays huge displays you still use 80 charaters?  OUCH!

I use 80 character eterms... that way I can tile three across on my
display.

> But okay.  I can shrink mine.  But seems a bit backwards if you ask me.

Well, it'd be fine if your message simply had NO linefeeds
within a
paragraph, that way the client could wrap the display properly
regardless
of terminal size.  But when you have linefeeds in your message
AND long
lines, I (and I assume many others) get funny wrapping like
this.

Dig?

> As for the rest of the comments.  I liked Red Hats approach to
> delivering a product that was not on the cutting edge but still
> supported the tools I needed.
[snip]
> I left the cutting edge a while back.

You're writing to a fellow that runs Debian stable on many boxes.  Don't
talk to me about leaving the cutting edge.  You can't even see the glint
of that edge from back there.

> As for Yearly fees on Windows.  I can buy the server and run it
> forever(okay, until they stop giving me updates :-) ) without
> subscribing to a yearly fee.  Yes, if I want OS support I would have to
> pay, but I haven't needed that level of support in 5 years.

I was under the impression that they were restructuring all of their
corporate licensing to annual fee models.

Has anyone else heard that?

> You are right about installing more versions of Linux would help me
> better understand them but it was the decision to choose one that I
> thought would be around a long time.  I would best leverage my time and
> learn one well.  Even with its little issues.  I'd know them and that
> would help me be more efficient.

Honestly, I think that's not true.  I think the better rounded your
understanding, the easier time you will have working outside the structure
imposed by the distribution and solving the problems that actually arise.
You simply wouldn't accept "its little issues".  You would have a means to
work around them.

We're not talking about learning all slavic languages to help you speak
better Romanian.  It's not that kind of investment.

> I still think having a product infront of others helps to build public
> awareness that there are alternatives.

I don't know anybody that can name their operating system that doesn't
have some idea what Linux is (however wrong-headed or misinformed).

> Last I checked you can still buy Windows and Mac OS X in the stores.

Yeah?  Where can you buy OS X?  The Computer Store, maybe.  But if you're
going in there, you already know what you're getting.

> But if your idea is to keep Linux as a dream project of a free world and
> never a product that is supported by a company then having it in the
> stores and selling a product is not worth much.

That's an odd twist of my words.

But I would agree that having a product on the shelf isn't worth very much
when the very idea of the system is that it's not a product that you have
to buy off a shelf from some company.

J.
-- 
   -----------------
     Jeme A Brelin
    jeme at brelin.net
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